Mass spectrometry imaging of glycosaminoglycans in biological samples

糖胺聚糖（GAGs）是我们体内的糖分子链，是细胞外空间中特别重要的一部分。它们有许多作用，包括控制其他分子在体内的运动，从而支持病毒入侵、癌症转移、组织和器官的生长以及从血液供应到身体其他部位的营养物质的运输等过程。为了了解这些过程，研究人员需要研究gag的工具，但目前的工具有限，只能揭示这些分子复杂性质的一小部分。该项目将使用质谱成像同时捕获1000个不同的测量值，以提供gag的完整结构特征。这将彻底改变GAGs的可视化方式，就像将照片中的颜色深浅从3种增加到1000种一样，揭示了不可见的差异和复杂性。想象一片长满不同花朵的田野。如果只使用3种颜色来拍摄，那么许多花看起来是一样的，实际上是不同的颜色，而其他花在3种颜色的限制下可能会出现单一色调，但在1000种颜色的限制下可能会被视为具有多种色调。同样，由于可用的评估空间差异的工具有限，研究人员目前无法看到GAG结构的差异，但通过开发质谱成像工具，这些差异将变得明显。为了开发一种适用于许多国内和国际研究人员的方法，该项目与三个国际合作者合作，每个合作者都有不同的样品，具有不同的技术要求。将对每个样本集进行优化，以演示该方法的实用性。这些合作使该项目中开发的分析方法能够在败血症，形态发生（新器官形成的方式）和癌症转移领域获得新的见解。

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are chains of sugar molecules in our body that are a particularly important part of the space outside of cells. They have a number of roles including controlling how other molecules move about the body and, thus, underpin processes like virus invasion, cancer metasis, growth of tissues and organs, and the transport of nutrients from the blood supply to the rest of the body. To understand these processes researchers need tools to study GAGs, but there is currently limited tools such that reveal only a small aspect of the complex nature of these molecules. This project will use mass spectrometry imaging to simultaneously capture 1000's of different measurements that provide a full structural characterisation of GAGs. This will revolutionise the visualisation of GAGs in the same way increasing the number of colour shades in a photograph from 3 to 1000 reveals the differences and complexities that are not otherwise visible. Consider a field full of different flowers. If the field was only photographed using 3 colour shades many flowers would appear the same that were in fact different colours, and other flowers might appear of a single tone when seen with the 3 colour limit, but with 1000 colours could be seen as having mulitple tones. In the same way, differences in GAG structure currently not visible to researchers because of the limited tools available to assess the differences spatially will be made apparent by developing mass spectrometry imaging tools.To develop an approach applicable to many national and international reseachers the project partners with three international collaborators each with different samples that have varied technical demands. Each sample set will be optimised to demonstrate the utility of the approach. These collaborations enable the analysis approach developed in this project to obtain new insights in the areas of sepsis, morphogenesis (the way that new organs form) and cancer metastasis.